04 April 2007

Anne Pierson Wiese

In the Brooklyn Botanic Garden the nightheron is on his branch of his tree, bluemoon curve of his body riding lowabove the pond, leaves dipping into waterbeneath him, green and loose as fingers.On the far shore, the ibis is whereI left him last time, a black cypheron his rock. These birds, they go to the rightplace every day until they die.

There are people like that in the city,with signature hats or empty attaché cases,expressions of private absorption fendingoff comment, who attach to physicallocations — a storefront, a stoop, a corner,a bench — and appear there daily as if for a job.They negotiate themselves into the patternof place, perhaps wiping windows, badly,for a few bucks, clearing the stoop of take-outmenus every morning, collecting the trashat the base of the WALK/DON’T WALK signand depositing it in the garbage can.

Even when surfaces change, when the Mom & Popstore becomes a coffee bar, when the parkbenches are replaced with dainty chairs and a pebbleborder, they stay, noticing what will never change:the heartprick of longitude and latitudeto home in on, the conviction that lifedepends, every day, on what outlasts you.